


this living hand, now warm and capable

by write_away



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Jon wants to die, M/M, Major character death - Freeform, post-160, the Eye is not a fan of this plan
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-25
Updated: 2020-03-25
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:08:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23305801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/write_away/pseuds/write_away
Summary: Sometimes, when it gets bad, Jon thinks about Martin’s hands.He’d always liked Martin’s hands, even before he admitted to liking Martin. Inky fingertips, cracked, dry palms, and a gentle touch. Knuckles that tightened around the arms of a chair, around a notebook, around a fistful of Jon’s hair as he stroked it gently out of his face while they kissed among the rubble of a decimated village.Fingers that wrapped around his throat.--Eliminating the problem comes at a cost.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 18
Kudos: 120





	this living hand, now warm and capable

**Author's Note:**

> Hi everyone! This is my first (only?) TMA fic, but I hope you enjoy. Warnings at the bottom!

**_"This living hand, now warm and capable"_ **

_by John Keats_

_ This living hand, now warm and capable _

_ Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold _

_ And in the icy silence of the tomb, _

_ So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights _

_ That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood _

_ So in my veins red life might stream again, _

_ And thou be conscience-calm’d–see here it is– _

_ I hold it towards you. _

* * *

Sometimes, when it gets bad, Jon thinks about Martin’s hands. 

He’d always liked Martin’s hands, even before he admitted to liking Martin. Inky fingertips, cracked, dry palms, and a gentle touch. Knuckles that tightened around the arms of a chair, around a notebook, around a fistful of Jon’s hair as he stroked it gently out of his face while they kissed among the rubble of a decimated village. 

Fingers that wrapped around his throat.

Jon knows that he is lonely (not Lonely, no, they cannot have a claim on him no matter how he longs to sink into the quiet fog of nothingness). 

He knows that it is his own fault (though he once tried to blame the terror he sows on the monster, he understands now that they are one and the same). 

He knows he wants to die. He just can’t quite figure out how to make it stick yet. 

He misses Martin’s hands even as he dreams about them cutting off his air supply and drowning him in darkness, misses holding them and kissing them and kissing him. 

It’s not a nightmare, exactly, when he dreams about the night Martin tried to kill him. Jon doesn’t have good dreams anymore - not that he ever really did - but the dreams of Martin don’t leave him whimpering in fear, chilled to the bone and soaked in sweat. They don’t leave him shaking. 

(The guilt is there, but that’s nothing new.)

His dreams of Martin do nothing to soothe the gnawing hunger in his gut, nor the constant ache in his chest, but he always wakes with a smile at the memory of callused skin on scars, the contact soft and bruising but welcome all the same. Then, the hairs on the back of his neck raise like he’s being watched and his blood burns and his eyes sting like needles are being pushed right through, as if he needs a reminder of what he is, as if he needs to be shown his place again and he weeps. 

Perhaps he does need to be reminded. He is a monster, after all. Monsters don’t smile at the thought of tears being brushed from their cheeks with a gentle swipe of the thumb. 

Do they?

Jon doesn’t know anymore. 

* * *

Jon was never a spiritual man, but on the nights he can’t sleep, the nights that the ghost of Martin whispers over him and he feels the phantom trace of fingertips lovingly drag over skin as if tracing the map to his heart, he begs for forgiveness. 

The first time is not a pretty sight, but he’s not exactly a pretty sight these days anyway. He can’t remember the last time he ate, though he Knew just a day ago when a young, handsome boy - couldn’t have been older than nineteen - approached him and spilled his blood, both figuratively and metaphorically. The boy had coughed himself to death in Jon’s arms once his story was done - something to do with the Web, something irrelevant enough that Jon doesn’t care to remember but valuable enough to fill him up, to satiate his hunger. He will be set for at least two more days. 

Jon does not cry when statements expire in his arms anymore. They had started to come  _ to _ him after - well. After Martin. Always ready to tell their story, always ready to die. Part of him wonders if the Eye thinks this is some sort of reward, a bribe, an appeasement of sorts to bring him victims whose suffering is nearly at an end. There’s only so much more pain he can inflict. It’s almost a blessing. 

He knows better: it‘s a taunt. Stay fed. Stay alive. You cannot follow them. 

As far as begging for forgiveness goes, there is very little point to the exercise. He curls up in a corner of whatever dingy abandoned flat he has found for the night and cries until his blood burns and eyes sting again.  _ Quit crying _ , he’s being told by his maker.  _ You Know it won’t ever be enough.  _

He does know. He won’t be forgiven by anyone - not by some entity or god or ghost. Not by himself. 

It still seems like the right thing to do.

* * *

It’s not accurate to say that the world is ending. 

The world is over. 

Jon doesn’t know when it ended for everyone else, but for him, the earth stopped spinning the moment Martin’s heart stopped under his hands. 

* * *

Jon murdered Martin. 

There’s really no way to make it sound better, sound kinder.  _ Kill _ feels distant, the way you might kill time or kill a bug that is buzzing in your ear.  _ Eliminate, exterminate  _ \- well, that’s what Martin was trying to do to him. It seems disingenuous to use the same word to describe them both. 

Jon  _ is _ a monster, after all. 

He wishes he didn’t remember the feeling of hot, sticky blood dripping down his arms, wishes he could erase the taste of copper from the air. He wishes he could have stopped himself. He wishes Martin had gotten to him first, wishes that the last thing he saw in this world could have been Martin’s face twisted in regret and fear and love as he squeezed and squeezed and squeezed. 

Most of all, though, he wishes he had ripped Martin’s eyes out first. Then, he wouldn’t have had to watch the light in them die. 

Martin didn’t warn him. Perhaps he should have. Perhaps, if Jon had known, he could have helped. He could have weighed himself down with all his remorse and swallowed his pride like arsenic and bared his throat more easily. 

The night that Jon murdered Martin was unremarkable in most regards. 

They blushed and laughed over canned beans that only Martin needed to eat but they split anyway. They reminiscenced about hot showers. They kissed fervently, Jon pushing Martin slowly into the dead grass and holding on tight, as if it would be the last time they would ever feel the press of mouths hungrily looking for love, the last time they would ever link their fingers together in a tangle so tight their wrists became numb and sore. 

Being with Martin was like hearing the click of a tape recorder - Jon felt Known and safe and seen. 

But when that was done, they readied for bed, brushing teeth with the last dredges of toothpaste and a dribble of dirty water from a stream. They hid from the horrors Jon had unleashed on the world. They avoided victims Jon could snack on. They slept, fitfully, pressed together in the threadbare sleeping bag that Martin had uncovered in the cottage, because fitful was how Jon always slept. 

Jon was  _ tired _ of being Jon. 

This was all his fault, unequivocally, no matter how Martin tried to twist the truth. Elias had led him there, but he had followed. He had fallen for the bait. He had tortured and tormented and hurt. 

Jon was unwittingly claimed by the Eye. That did not mean he didn’t  _ enjoy _ Knowing. 

That’s why he wasn’t exactly surprised to wake, gasping, with Martin’s hands around his throat. 

They had talked about it before, Jon always adamant that eliminating him would at least nudge the world back toward the right track, break the Entities’ connection and break the spell, and Martin… well, Martin believed that Jon could be saved. 

A small part of Jon bathed in the satisfaction of victory as his boyfriend wept over him, murmuring  _ Imsorryimsorryimsofuckingsorry,  _ pressing down on his windpipe as gently and firmly as he could, as methodical in his suffocation as he was making a cup of tea. 

For a poet, Martin is -  _ was _ bad at using his words. That’s all right, because Jon is too. They both knew a cup of tea really meant “I love you.” Jon supposed this was just another way to say it. 

Jon had sighed - choked, really, but a sigh was his intention - into the blackness, into the dark, into the End as it approached and hoped that Martin would understand he was saying “ _ thank you _ .” 

And then the Eye noticed. 

* * *

Jon does not eat food anymore. He does not drink water. He gorges himself on trauma, he gulps down tears. 

If only the Eye would let him starve. 

He tries to hide out from the statements. It doesn’t work. They find him. 

He tries a massacre, hoping the Slaughter will take him if the Hunt doesn’t first. He wouldn’t mind dying at the slice of Daisy’s blade. Of anyone’s. It doesn’t work. They stand at a distance, wary and scared and watching with blades drawn. Then they flee, leaving Jon to sob and sleep off his feast. 

He tries to be alone. He tries to fall. He tries to dig. He turns out the lights, hoping some other monster will sneak through the pitch and carry him away. He takes his own flesh until he thinks there’s no more to take, only to wake the next morning full and whole and horrifically healthy. He begs for the Spiral to take him, for the Stranger to replace him, for the Corruption to eat him away. He sets himself on fire. He throws himself at spiders. 

All pleas to the Entities go unheard. 

The End refuses to take him. 

Jon has no choice but to survive. 

When it gets bad, he thinks longingly of the way Martin’s lips curled into a smile, the way his voice shook when he said something too sincere to contain it, the way he whispered love poems when he thought Jon was fast asleep, the way his eyes would sometimes gaze into nothing before blinking back to him, as if even the Lonely’s hypnosis was not enough to entice him away from Jon’s arms.

He thinks about the way Martin liked his tea too hot and too sweet, the way Martin danced quite poorly to any song with a beat, the way Martin’s accent rolled over syllables when he quotes Keats. He thinks about the click of the tape recorder and the tangle of fingers. 

He thinks about Martin’s hands around his neck - the last time he ever said “I love you” - and only then can he drift off to sleep. 

**Author's Note:**

> tw: suicide ideation, suicide attempts, strangulation, a reference to ripping out eyes, other brief examples of canon-typical violence
> 
> If you liked it, please let me know! I'd love to know how many hearts I broke. (I keep a tally.)


End file.
